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If you enjoy animals as much as I do, you’re probably sharing some kind of space with them such as your home, your office or a retreat. When I’m blogging from my home office, I’m often surrounded by our three dogs; Reality, an 11 year old Black Lab, Paul, a four-year old Aussie mix and George, a one-year old Aussie mix. My pack follows me from room-to-room all day, every day to the point that I try to let them know when I’m just going to the kitchen to make a quick cup of expresso and will be right back so they don’t have to get up from their comfortable nap positions to accompany me. In fact I communicate with them often about where I’m going, what’s going on in my world, even who I’m talking with on the phone (especially if it’s their Grammy who they love!) and most especially if where I’m going or what I’m doing will have an effect on their world.

Reality, Paul and George in the kitchen

I’ve communicated with my animals by talking to them and/or “sending pictures” to them for so many years that I forget that not everybody who loves and enjoys animals does. It’s been my experience through the animal communication process that the level and breadth of their intelligence and ability to communicate is as wide and varied as, well, people. When I meet animal friends of friends, I am often struck by how much their animal “knows”. It is shocking to me that so many times the human involved has no idea the level of awareness that their animal friend has about their world and the human(s) they share it with.

Recently, a good friend of mine had to uproot her longtime home (landlord made everyone move out of their apartments so that they could be redone) and after tireless searching finally found one of the only apartments left to rent in Austin (well, okay, the kind of apartment community that she would want) and landed into a situation where she could have her cat, but the cat could never go outside. It’s in the contract. This friend’s cat, Gilda, has been an indoor/outdoor cat since she was a babe and is used to roaming about the apartment complex freely, befriending humans and cats alike. She is very affectionate and loves my friend greatly (always goes to sleep near her pillow with her paw outstretched so as to touch my friend somewhere on her body while in sleep). My friend is totally distraught because Gilda is protesting loudly about being inside to the point that she has been let out sometimes only to come back either bitten by a neighborhood cat or soaking wet from falling in the pool. Understandably, it is difficult for my friend to adjust to their new apartment much less come home after a 12-hour medical shift to a Houdini cat who will use whatever method works to escape from an open door.

As my friend told me this story, weeping because the only solution she could see was to find Gilda a good home where she could be an indoor/outdoor cat, I asked her if she had told Gilda all of what was going on. Had she told her about the move and why they had to move. Had she told her about looking everywhere for the kind of apartment community they enjoyed and after finally finding one, learning they did not allow cats to go outside? She allowed that she had kind of talked with Gilda, but not to the depth I had suggested. I immediately thought of a long time friend, Leta Worthington, who is a well-respected animal communicator (http://www.herbsandanimals.com/) and recommended that this friend contact her to initiate communication between said friend and her cat. I also encouraged her to bring Gilda into the conversation that very night, with everything that had gone on and ask her if she would prefer living with another good person so she could be indoor/outdoor or if she would be okay living inside for at least a year until they could find a better space for both of them.

My sense is that Gilda loves my friend so much that she will agree to stay for a finite period of time. I also sensed that Gilda did not understand all the changes that had been going on in their lives over the past couple of months and really needed to be told so that she could make choices. My experience of most cats are that although they’re independent they’re also very practical and will be honest about what their preferences are by what makes the most sense to them.

We humans have so many issues with communicating with each other that it may seem that we have not time or bandwidth left in our brains to think about communicating with animals—-but when we do make time we just might discover that this new form of communication can help us out in more ways than we could have even imagined.